SAN JOSE — In the midst of a historic crime wave nearly two years ago, a young college student shopping for snacks at the Safeway on Story Road was killed when a man came out of nowhere and drove a knife into his chest.

It was the seventh killing in 10 days and the public finally had enough. At a rally outside the store, people pleaded with city officials and police to stop the slaughter. Because the motive for the stabbing was under investigation, the public was left with the impression that 24-year-old Juan Munoz was a random victim in a city gone wild.

But in an opening statement in the murder trial of Michael Howard on Monday, prosecutor Matt Braker painted a different, but equally chilling scenario — that Howard actually knew Munoz and killed him because of a perceived slight that took place four years earlier.

“Revenge, payback,” said Braker, contending that’s what drove Howard, now 29, to fatally stab Munoz on Aug. 21, 2012. “It’s been the motive for murder since the beginning of time, and it is the reason this defendant pursued, provoked, pushed and then murdered Juan Munoz.”

The thirst for revenge dated back to December 2008, when both young men worked at the Pizza Hut on White Road, Braker said. Howard was a delivery guy, Munoz a cashier.

According to Braker, they didn’t get along. Munoz was popular; Howard was a problem employee. One day, they began arguing in the kitchen. Munoz wound up slapping Howard, but Pizza Hut disciplined both workers, not just Munoz.

“It was humiliating (to Howard), it was embarrassing,” Braker argued.

Howard nursed a grudge, Braker argued, even though both men no longer worked at Pizza Hut at the time of stabbing. Munoz had worked at Macy’s and been a student at San Jose City College, Braker said.

Howard’s lawyer, Kelley Kulick, acknowledged that Howard stabbed Munoz. But she contended in a brief opening statement that Munoz did more than just slap Howard once. Munoz called him names, “talked bad about him” to other employees, threatened physical violence and actually assaulted him in the workplace more than once, she argued.

“This is not a crime of ‘who,’ this is not a crime of ‘what,’ ” said Kulick. “The only question that remains for you is ‘why’ — because Mr. Howard was afraid.”

Kulick has the choice of asking Judge Ron M. Del Pozzo to allow her to argue at the end of the trial that the jury should find Howard guilty of manslaughter, not murder. Under that scenario, she’d argue “imperfect self-defense,” meaning Howard had an honest but unreasonable belief that Munoz was going to do something to hurt him. It carries a maximum sentence of 11 years — compared with 25 years to life for murder.

But Kulick’s argument may be hard to win because Safeway has 48 surveillance cameras at the Story Road store, which captured the killing. The video clearly shows that it was Howard who followed Munoz into the store, searched for him in the aisles and, even after Munoz started to walk away, attacked him in the produce section.

The video doesn’t capture sound. But an eyewitness reported hearing Howard say to Munoz, “What’s up, bitch?” and then shove him. The video shows Munoz was backing away with his hands up when Howard reached into his pocket, clicked open his knife, and, using his whole body weight, stabbed Munoz just once, right below the heart.

Tracey Kaplan is a reporter for the Bay Area News Group based at The Mercury News. She covers courts and has been in love with reporting for the past 30 years, including eight at the Los Angeles Times where she was part of a group that won a breaking news Pulitzer for coverage of the 1994 Northridge quake. Recently, she and two fellow reporters won first place for enterprise reporting from the California Newspaper Publishers Association. Talking to people -- including activists, public defenders, prosecutors, academics and inmates -- about the strengths and troubling weaknesses of the criminal justice system fascinates her, as does swimming laps as often as she can.

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